Animorphs: A New Hope
by leslieah
Summary: When the Animorphs find out there was another team on Earth fighting the Yeerks, one that only has one member still living, they join forces to try to save their planet. TobiasxRachel possibly Marco or JakexOC
1. Chapter 1

** In this story the Animorphs are in their early 20s (21-23) only recruited 2 years prior. Ax has already joined them, and Tobias was never caught in a morph. It's been a long while since I've read the books, so a lot of it will be AU as I make things more how I would want them to go. Please review!**

**MONDAY**

Rachel sat on the bench with her eyes closed outside the university waiting for Cassie to get out class, enjoying the sun. She didn't notice as Marco and Jake snuck up on her.

"Hey pretty lady..." Marco whispered in a faux deep voice. She jumped and swung at him, Jake grabbed her arm to prevent Marco from getting a bloody nose. "Geez Rachel, violent much?" He asked her, backing away quickly.

"I was just defending myself from a potential attacker..." She said innocently, brushing her hair back behind her shoulders.

Tobias and Cassie walked up to the group. "Hey what's going on?" Tobias asked.

"Your girlfriend is trying to assault me again!" Marco said loudly.

Tobias gave Rachel a disappointed look. "Rachel, what did we agree on about assaulting Marco?"

Rachel sighed, "only when you're around to laugh about it." She recited.

"You guys need to respect me, one day you'll be real sorry you beat old Marco around." Marco said, in mock martyrdom.

"Is this the correct time for us to go consume nourishment?" Ax said approaching the group. "Nourish-ment. Nouu-rish." He tested his human mouth, always amused at the sounds it produced.

"Ax we're in public!" Jake said with a grin. The alien looked sheepishly at him.

"I'm sorry Prin... Jake." Ax said, remembering how much Jake disliked being called prince.

"It's alright Ax man, and yes it's lunch time." Jake said. The group didn't notice the small auburn haired girl watching them carefully. She picked up a class schedule, focusing on it intently, and walked towards the quad, bumping into Marco.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" the girl said, widening her blue eyes as she threw her hand up to her mouth.

"I'm fine, I should really look where I'm standing..." Marco said, trying to check the girl out without her noticing.

"You look lost..." Rachel said to the girl suspiciously. Rachel never took well to strangers.

"I kind of am, I just transferred here, and this campus is so much bigger than my last university. Do you have any idea where the Chem lab is?"

"It's just past this building, take a right at the next intersection and you'll see it on the left." Jake explained. "Are you a chemistry major?"

"Oh, no I'm an archeology major, but for some God awful reason I guess I need another science to graduate, something about being well rounded." She said with a lazy flip of her hand.

"Well, I'm Jake, this is Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias and Ax." Jake said pointing to each one in turn.

She smiled and waved, "I'm Lindsay."

Tobias noticed a flyer for 'The Sharing' sticking out of her notebook. "Are you looking into joining?" He asked, pointing at it.

"Oh, no... some guy handed it to me. They had a chapter on my old campus too. I'm not into the whole sorority/fraternity thing, and that's what it seemed to be." she said with a glance at her watch. "Oh dang, I'm late, thank you for the help!" Lindsay said with a wave as she walked away.

"Well, I'll be the pig. She was a babe." Marco said. Rachel snorted and punched Marco in the arm. "I'm just speaking the truth!"

"She might be the only girl on campus shorter than you, maybe you should go after her." Cassie said with a smile. The group talked happily as they headed to lunch.

Lindsay sat in the chemistry class unable to focus. They were the ones she was looking for. She could just feel it. But they were so... carefree, so happy. Their minds were clearly not on the mission. She would have to do more recon before revealing herself to them. She looked at the paper she had been doodling on. It was the flyer for The Sharing. She laughed to herself. The last time she went to a meeting of The Sharing was the last time she had seen her team alive.

**WEDNESDAY**

Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax, and Tobias sat in Cassie's Mother's barn discussing the next meeting of The Sharing. Even though the Animorphs lived in a small apartment complex close to the university, they enjoyed meeting in the barn, they often found animals to acquire for recon missions, and it was a comforting place for them.

"I think it's too dangerous to go on an all out assault. IF we go, it's recon only, and even then we have no idea what kind of technology they've developed recently, they could find us." Jake said.

"We need to send them a message, they think that we're scared, that we're hiding. Every day they're getting more and more controllers. It's disgusting." Rachel said with disdain.

"I'll be the first one to vote for 'continue hiding'" Marco said.

"Shut up Marco." Rachel and Jake said, going back to their argument.

"Guys, we need to figure something out, the meeting is tomorrow. If we can't come to an agreement, then we won't do shit." Tobias said, tired of hearing them.

"Did I mention I like the hiding option?" Marco said again.

"We could use the fly morph to do recon, get in get out." Cassie suggested.

"I hate the fly, I can't control it well enough, and I'm always trying to land in garbage or shit." Rachel whined. "Now my grizzly could take out some Yeerks..."

"Right Xena, and the human controllers holding those Yeerks too right?" Marco said sarcastically. The group continued arguing over each other, when Ax, in Andalite form, looked up at the rafters with his stalk eyes. **_Oh my... hello_.**

The group turned their gazes upward to follow Ax's. Up on a high rafter, sat Lindsay wearing a skin tight leotard and bike shorts. She smiled slightly at them. "Well aren't you all one big happy family?"

"...the fuck?" Marco said, jumping up, looking at the others. They were all wearing the same confused expressions.

"Hold on, I'll be right there." Lindsay said, she focused her concentration, and morphed into a small sparrow. She flew down to the ground and morphed back to herself. She looked at the silent group. "Tada?" she said, giving a half hearted set of jazz hands.

"... the fuck?" Marco repeated, looking at Jake.

"Oh come on, you guys aren't the only ones that touched that god forsaken box." Lindsay said, slightly frustrated at their lack of comprehension.

"There's more of us?" Jake asked.

"Well, not anymore..." Lindsay said, her bright eyes darkening.

"I think you owe us a little more of an explanation than that." Rachel said, fuming that the girl had gotten in. Clearly their security was seriously lacking.

"Well boys and girls one day there were 5 ordinary people walking back from a particularly brutal game of softball. They were barely more than teenagers really, probably the same age as you when you got your powers. They saw a flash of light in an empty parking lot, and then a giant spaceship, an honest to God, close encounters of the third kind spaceship. Being curious, they wandered over to it, and they see a... well a you."

She said motioning to Ax, "named Prince Elfangor walk out holding an innocent looking box. He tells them that he's recruiting two teams to help stop an alien invasion, at which point the group is wondering if they smoked something and forgot about it, because they're really tripping out. Prince Elfangor then drops another load of knowledge on them, telling them that they'll be given the abilities to morph into animals so they can battle this intergalactic evil. And the cherry on this fucked up sundae was when he told the group that the smallest, youngest, LEAST interested member of their little ragtag team was going to be their leader, and lead them proudly into victory. Spoiler alert, that would be me." Lindsay said, pointing at herself.

"For some reason I still haven't quite figured out, we all agreed to help this space man and took the powers. Things went wonderfully for a while, we were kicking ass, taking names, we even took out a low ranking Vissor. The best part was the Yeerks thought that it was Andalites causing all this trouble for them. They didn't even suspect that there were two teams, they thought the 'bandits' were just traveling around the country to screw with them. Then, one fateful day, the team decided to do a little recon and a meeting for 'the sharing'. You know, the special VIP underground party, with complimentary hot tub access. Well during this recon, the fearless leader saw her boyfriend, the nad she was certain she was going to marry, down waiting in line for his Yeerk drop. Now that stung, but then once the Yeerk dropped, he laughed, smiled, joked, and was generally just loving life. The scum voluntarily took a Yeerk. Well, fearless leader saw red, and the recon mission turned into an attack, which turned into a massacre. Everyone on the team was injured or killed and our two hour limit was close. I knew we couldn't morph out and into something quick enough to fly away before they got us, so we tried to provoke them to go for a kill shot. Unfortunately they were smarter than that, realizing capturing us would be much more useful. Somehow the three of us that were left managed to get out after tearing through a couple Hork-Bajir, and out of the area, I managed to morph out, but the other two... there was just so much blood... they couldn't concentrate, they couldn't get out, and they ended up dying as a fucking lion and a panther. There weren't even any bodies for their families to mourn..."

Lindsay trailed off staring past the others as she recalled her last night with her team. "Anyway, after a couple months of feeling like a complete piece of shit, and wallowing in self pity, I decided to do something useful, and see if I could help you guys out." She looked to them for a response.

They all felt as if she was telling them their stories, instead of hers. Only her's had the ending they all dreaded. "Give us a minute..." Jake said, pulling the group away.

"Ok seriously? What the fuck?" Marco said again.

_**I believe you've asked that... twice**_ Ax said.

"Well no one's answering me!" Marco protested.

"Prince Elfangor never told us about this other team..." Rachel said.

"He was pretty preoccupied at the time." Tobias said.

"If she's an Animorph, we can't turn her away. She's one of us." Cassie said.

_**I agree we could use the assistance.**_ Ax provided his own opinion.

"Someone has to watch her for the next three days, just in case." Jake said.

"Oh I volunteer!" Marco said eagerly.

"We'll take shifts, perv." Rachel said rolling her eyes. The group walked back over to Lindsay who was looking at a raccoon in a cage. She turned and looked at them hopefully.

"Welcome to the Animorphs." Jake said, holding out his hand smiling. Lindsay shook it, and smiled hesitantly. "Not to be a downer, but we're going to have to watch you the next three days to make sure nothing slimy comes out of your head."

"Eh I understand." She said with a shrug. She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Animorphs?"

"What did you call yourselves?" Jake asked.

"Nothing really... family I guess." She said poignantly.

*Let me know what you think so far, I love reviews!*


	2. Chapter 2

**THURSDAY**

Given the events of the day before, Jake made the decision that they would not go to The Sharing meeting that night. Lindsay was sitting in Rachel and Cassie's apartment with them. Cassie was being nice enough, making small talk with her. Rachel however, mostly just sat and glared.

"What morphs have you acquired?" Cassie asked Lindsay.

"Oh geez, ummm... A tiger, sparrow, border collie, termite- terrible idea by the way, polar bear, llama- don't ask, a spider, and a cobra. Lindsay answered, ticking them off on her fingers.

Rachel snorted. "That's it?"

Lindsay narrowed her eyes at her. "It's pretty hard to waltz into a zoo and tell the keepers that you just need to touch the animals real quick... we went at night when we could, but security made it difficult."

"Well, my Mom works at the zoo here, so we made a copy of her keys a while back so we could get in and get what we needed after hours, so next time we go you can get a few more." Cassie said, trying to diffuse the situation quickly. Ax, Jake, Tobias and Marco walked in as Lindsay stood up and walked towards the door.

"What's up?" Jake asked, looking at Rachel's angry face.

"Just getting to know each other." Cassie answered her face pleading with him to shut up.

"You can't leave!" Rachel yelled angrily at Lindsay.

Lindsay whipped around. "Then come with me."

"I'll come!" Marco said, oblivious to the two girls confrontation. Lindsay rolled her eyes at Rachel, but smiled slightly at Marco, opening the door and ushering him out.

"What the hell is that? Marco is supposed to be on my side!" Rachel said, her cheeks turning pink as she fumed.

"Baby, we're all on the same side..." Tobias said, putting a hand on Rachel's shoulder.

"I don't trust her!" Rachel insisted.

"Why? Do you think she's been infected?" Jake asked, concerned about his cousin's outburst.

"No! Because she should have gone down with her team! She shouldn't be here if they aren't! What kind of shitty leader lets all of them die, but gets out herself?"

"A good leader makes the hard choices. I can tell from the pain in her eyes that she wishes she had stayed, but instead she helped the wounded escape, and evaded the possibility of being captured. She will blame herself every day and will beat herself up more than you ever could." Ax said quietly. Rachel looked at him and her expression softened.

"Rachel, would you want me to stay? If it was our team, would you want me to be captured? We said we'd rather die than be infected." Jake said.

"I still don't like her." Rachel grumbled.

"You don't have to like her, but she's part of our team now, and you have to get along with her, you have to work with her." Jake said firmly, letting her know it was an order.

**FRIDAY**

Lindsay sat in class, knowing Ax was buzzing around somewhere, in his fly morph. He would occasionally make a comment to her in thought-speak, but mostly he was quiet. The professor finally released them, and Lindsay gathered her things.

"Hey."

Lindsay looked up into the blue eyes of one of her classmates. He was tall, tan, and very cute.

"Hi..." She said warily.

"You're new here right? I didn't think they took people mid semester."

"Oh yeah, lots of hoops to jump through, but it's possible." She said with a small smile.

"Well, I'm Reid." He held his hand out to her.

She grabbed his hand and shook it. "Lindsay."

"Well Lindsay, would you like to go out sometime? Dinner or something? Hell I'd even take a yes for lunch." He said with a flirtatious grin.

The memories of her ex, of the night in The Sharing flashed through her mind. "Um..."

"It's just one date..." He said gently, still holding onto her hand.

"Alright, one date. Here's my number." She said finally, writing it on a sheet of paper.

_Prince Marco will be displeased_ She heard an amused voice in her head as a fly buzzed by her ear. She brushed it away gently.

"I've got to get going, see you around." She said, turning and hurrying away. She smiled slightly, and went to a small secluded area where Ax could morph back to his Andalite form, then into his human form.

"That class was very interesting, inter- esting, interesting. I never knew the study of ancient bones could entail so much." Ax said to her.

"You learn something new every day Ax." She said as they walked to the quad.

"And what of this boy that you are going on a date with?" Ax inquired.

"What of him?" She asked.

"Is he safe?"

"I have no idea. It's not like I'm planning on telling him 'oh by the way I have the ability to morph into animals and these slimy brain snatchers would love nothing more than to capture me'."

"Yes, I believe that would be unwise." Ax said thoughtfully.

"Ax, haven't the others taught you about sarcasm?"

"Oh yes Prince Tobias said that anything Prince Marco says is not to be taken seriously, as it is more than likely sarcasm."

"That's probably a good rule of thumb..." Lindsay mumbled. They got to the quad where they saw the others waiting for them.

"Did you have fun Ax?" Cassie asked.

"Oh yes, and I believe that Reid did as well." Lindsay smacked Ax as he said that.

"Who's Reid?" Jake asked in confusion.

"The student, stoo-dent, that asked Lindsay for a date."

"Already going on dates? Do you think that's wise?" Rachel asked.

"I think that my life is my business and as long as he doesn't try to take me to a slimy hot tub I'll be alright." Lindsay shot back at her. The two girls glared at each other.

Tobias cleared his throat, "speaking of hot tubs, let's go to Cassie's and talk."

Once they were in the barn they all looked to Tobias, who looked at Jake.

"Tobias and I have found out that Student Clinic on campus just got a hefty donation from The Sharing." Jake began. "We also discovered that they will have a delivery tomorrow evening to include "Hazardous Material" and a small hot tub."

The group groaned, no good come from this. "Well ladies and gentlemen, who's up for some Yeerk killin'?" Marco joked behind dark eyes.

"We should go to The Gardens tonight, acquire some morphs." Cassie said, looking at Lindsay, who nodded in agreement.

"Let's talk strategy, we need small and fast, and a couple bigger and stronger for fire power." Rachel said, getting into her zone. "I'm thinking mice to get in, then some big cats and maybe raccoons or monkeys for anything requiring opposable thumbs, unless we're cool with destroying the place then I could always just go grizzly..."

"NO RACHEL!" Jake, Tobias, Marco and Cassie said.

Rachel grinned at them. "Fine, so cats and raccoons? Kind of boring, but whatever..."

"Boring is good, boring is safe." Jake reminded her. "Lindsay, do you have anything we can use?"

"I've got a tiger..."

"When we go to the Gardens, pick up a panther or something smaller than a Tiger, just in case, but we'll probably just use it. Marco has the chimp morph and I have raccoon if we need it, but I think we should be good with Marco taking care of anything. So who's going to go to the pet store and get us some mice?" Jake asked.

"I'll go." Lindsay volunteered. Tobias said he would go with her, which made Rachel also volunteer.

"Rachel, why don't you come with us and scope out possible entry points and weak links. You, Cassie, Marco, and I can make appointments for different areas of the clinic so we can have a good map of the whole place." Jake said to her. She scowled, but agreed. The group separated, getting ready to prepare for the next night.

****Reviews make me update faster! :) ****


	3. Chapter 3

Tobias and Lindsey walked out of the pet store with a couple different sized mice and rats, so they could decide which would be best. Lindsey turned to Tobias, "So, does everyone hate me, or is it just Rachel?"

"Rachel doesn't..." Tobias began, as Lindsey raised her eyebrows, giving Tobias an incredulous look. "Rachel just needs time to get used to you. But everyone else likes you just fine."

"I just don't really know what I did to her..." Lindsey said, looking off in the distance.

"It's not anything you did to her, she's incredibly protective of our group, and just needs time to adjust to a new member." Tobias said carefully. "You ready for tomorrow night?" He asked, changing the subject.

Lindsey sighed, looking at him grimly. "Honestly? No."

"Yeah, me either."

**SATURDAY**

The group gathered in Marco, Jake and Tobias's townhouse as they finalized plans. "So Rachel and Tobias will be at the student center, Cassie and I at the library, Lindsey and Marco at the gym. Ax will do aerial sweeps of the clinic to make sure things are still going as planned. At 9 pm we all leave our areas, find the closest private place and morph into our mice and rats. Keep out of sight, and get to our meeting spot at the back of the clinic. We know the new 'wellness center' that they are debuting Monday is in the southwest portion of the building. We get in, get to the first exam room, morph out, then morph into our firepower. From there it will touch and go, we'll need to rely on our sense of smell to figure out where they have the slugs held. Everyone know their part?" Jake gave orders comfortably, looking up at his team.

They all nodded, looking at each other warily. He sighed running his hand through his short brown hair. "I'm hoping that after the delivery at 730 they will leave the building and we can do this with no casualties, but I'm pretty sure that's a pipe dream. Watch out for each other, and yourselves. If I tell you to bail, do it." He looked at Rachel as he emphasized the last part.

The group got up and left, going to their respective starting points. They realized they could never be too careful when it came to who was watching them, and got in the habit long ago of being seen at other places the night of attacks, and not in one large group. Marco and Lindsey walked slowly towards the gym, as if walking to the executioner. "Well if I die tonight, at least I'll have totally ripped abs." Marco joked as they walked.

Lindsey looked at him and cocked her head. "You're full of jokes aren't you Marco?" She said with a small smile.

He shrugged. "Everyone's got their coping mechanisms, it's either this or pot, and I think Jake would frown upon that."

She laughed. "I think it's good you can joke. This shit's serious enough, laughing is important."

He perked up at her semi compliment. "Baby, I'll be your clown any day." he said in a deep suave voice.

She rolled her eyes at him, and they went their seperate ways when they reached the gym, keeping careful eyes on their watches.

No one on campus noticed the rats and mice running through the darkened campus. _*You all smell very good, my hawk brain wants to eat you.*_ Ax told them as they got close to the building.

_*That's comforting Ax. Seriously.*_ Marco replied.

_*Anyone else really want to just gather a bunch of stuff and hide out somewhere warm?*_ Tobias asked. The others agreed.

_*Everyone in control?*_ Jake asked as they waited for Ax to morph. _*Cassie, time?*_

_*We have about 45 minutes left before our 15 minute window.*_ Cassie replied.

Once Ax was in mouse form, they crawled into a broken air duct, and ran through it, to a piece of torn insulation. Once they had gnawed through that they were in the clinic waiting room. Jake led them to the wellness area, hugging the walls and staying in the shadows. they approached a exam room in the wellness clinic that's door was cracked. Going in and making sure there was noone in the darkened room, they all changed back to human form, looking at each other silently, they focused and changed again. Lindsey into a llynx, Rachel a cougar, Cassie a panther, Jake a snow leopard, Marco a chimp, Tobias and Ax, wolves. They stalked through the darkened hallways quietly, stopping when they heard someone talking.

"Hurry up, Vissir Three wanted this set up and ready for Monday!"

"It's done, they're regenerating, its the perfect temperature."

"Yes but we have to prepare the holding area downstairs."

_*Hide.*_ Cassie said, noticing the stairwell beside her. The Animorphs spread out, hiding amongst the shadows and under the sparce funiture in the halls. Two human controllers walked down the stairwell. The animorphs stopped at the corner and Jake peered around the corner._ *Two Hork Bajir inside the room that I can see. Rachel, can you cause a distraction?*_ If a cougar could smile, Rachel would have. She slinked down the hallway in the opposite direction of the room. Once she rounded the corner, a large crash filled the silence.

_*Oh clumsy me, I just wanted a pamphlet about what to if I start itching in my no no parts, and the whole bookcase just fell over.*_ Rachel said as the Hork Bajir ran towards the noise.

_*Cassie, back up Rachel, the rest of you with me.* _Jake ordered as they ran towards the room they thought was now unguarded. Jake and Ax went in first, jumping on two humans they didn't plan on, holding them down, trying to carefully to not kill them, but making both pass out in pain, or fear. Lindsay and Marco went over to the hot tub of muck that already had yeerks swimming in it.

_*Shit, what do we do now?*_ Marco exclaimed. He had hoped to dump the barrel and play whack a yeerk before they were in a more permanent home.

Lindsay looked around for something, then noticed the hot tub was set to the lowest setting._ *Marco, our friends look a little chilly don't you think?*_

Marco tilted his head before the metaphorical light bulb went off. _*Oh yeah, well we would just be bad friends if we didn't help them out.* _He replied as he turned the temperature gauge all the way up, and the copper colored water began to boil.

*The Bajir were sleepy. Don't worry Cassie and I put them down for a nap... what is that smell?* Rachel asked as she and Cassie slunk into the room.

_* We're making yeerk stew!* _Marco exclaimed happily.

_*Marco add some of those bottles of alcohol and hydrogen peroxide for good measure, and then lets get the hell out of here.*_ Jake said.

Marco obliged, singing a terrible song about cooking yeerks that he made up as he went along.

_*I hear something, we need to go now.*_ Tobias said anxiously.

_*Alright Animorphs, we're out of here.*_ Jake said, and as quickly as they struck the Animorphs were gone.

AN: Sorry it's been a million years! If anyone is still reading this, please review!


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